


In the Moment

by Ekphrasis



Category: The Bold Type
Genre: Adena is the BIGGEST GAY, Alternate Universe - Art School, F/F, Kat is Pansexual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 16:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11718339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ekphrasis/pseuds/Ekphrasis
Summary: Yale School of Art: Kat is a photography major, Sutton a fashion major, and Jane a journalism major. They live their lives, loving each other and loving everything around them, and everything is balanced.That is, until Adena El-Amin pops in.aka, the art college au that no one asked for





	1. Red

The first thing that Kat noticed when she walked outside that morning was that the weather was that perfectly mellow mix between cool and warm. She looked up at the trees that were still green (but barely), noting that August in New Haven, Connecticut, meant that one could already begin to feel the advances of winter. She _loved_ this weather, the in-between stages of the seasons, the uncertainty of whether she would need to wear a sweater or not that day. It made her want to photograph the trees, try to capture that ambiguity.

So, smiling, she raised her Canon EOS 6D Mark II to the tree tops and snapped a picture of the sun shining through the leaves. A breeze drifted through them and brought to her nose the smell of fresh pine and maple, and she couldn’t help but inhale until she felt like her ribcage was going to burst.

 

She _loved_ this weather.

 

That was the first thing she told Jane and Sutton that morning when they met up at their favorite coffee shop, Blue State Coffee. It was a quaint place, with an vintage-style hanging sign out front and a homely feel  on the inside. There were chairs and booths everywhere, people that went in and out at all hours of the day, and a pervasive and persistent smell of strong espresso.

 _If only smells could be captured in pictures_ , she had once thought, capturing a ceiling shot.

At that moment, she was sitting in front of the two women but was staring outside instead, trying to find the perfect frame of people walking to their classes and jobs and lives. Jane was animatedly describing something from her Journalism class late last night to Sutton, who had her sketchbook open, languidly drawing out a fashionable winter coat. Kat shook herself out of her reverie in frustration, having missed the photo opportunity, and looked at both of them and smiled. Oh, how she loved them, how they were indispensable to her. Faintly, she thought Jane and Sutton were comparable to her camera’s grid, showing her where to frame her thirds. They were the cornerstone to her life.

 

“And so I said, that isn’t proper etiquette! You’re supposed to tell the person you’re interviewing that they have a right to choose to not be shown on camera! But, in this video, you can clearly see that the journalist chose to omit that, to get this person on camera for shock value.”

Jane was showing Sutton a video, but Sutton was looking at Jane instead, the same way Kat was looking at both of them: with a look of deep caring and affection. Kat saw mirth in her eyes.

 

“I see it, Jane. You were completely right, I’m sure your professor knew that, too.”

 

“Yeah! He even told me in front of the entire class. Half the rich white boys looked at me like they wanted to ask their daddies to get the Dean to kick me out.” She grumbled.

 

Kat laughed at that, despite herself. Both women looked up, and Kat could see the muscles on their faces soften. She was trained to see that, trained to understand how light can fall on a person’s face in a million minute ways and convey a million minute things. She could feel her mind analyze the women’s expressions in that moment, the relaxation of the muscles between the eyebrows meaning they were comfortable around her, the light twitch at the corner of their mouths a side effect of the joy she brought them.

 

“Still here.” She said softly, chuckling.

 

Jane’s brow furrowed immediately. “Kat, I’m so sorry, I just got so carried away -”

 

Kat leaned forward, making her voice firmer, trying to sound less like she was hurt (which wasn’t true) and more like she just got lost in her mind (which was).

 

“Jane. I zoned out, is all. Looking at the people.”

 

They both leaned back at that. They understood her. They understood how she was always, _always_ looking for a good shot, sometimes to the point of complete dissociation. She couldn’t help it: it was as if her brain was configured like a camera and pulled her towards beautiful possibilities like a magnet, pulling at the iron in her blood. She wanted to make people feel, at all times, wanted to be the cause of change, and wanted pictures to be her weapon. Once she knew that about herself, she never left her camera for a second. The unfortunate side effect was that sometimes, she wasn’t present in the moment, and she owned up to the consequences gladly.

They settled into a comfortable silence. Sutton looked at Jane with a smile, and Kat took that opportunity to snap a picture. It was instinctual the way her hands slid down to her camera, her finger carressing the shutter, her face still, peering through the lens, all in a fraction of a second. _Click._ She looked at the picture through the display before it disappeared: Sutton leaning back, looking at Jane, who was tilted towards her, elbow on the edge of the chair, but looking outside.

 

It was perfectly framed, of course.

 

Suddenly, Kat realized the time, and was shaken out of the haze of companionship that the two women always cast upon her. She had a class in exactly seven minutes, and it was across campus.

 

“Shit! Guys, I have -”

 

“Basic Drawing, we know. Go mingle with the art nerds,” Interrupted Sutton with a smile, as she also stood up and put her sketchbook in her bag. “I have Fashion anyways. I'll walk part of the way with you.”

Jane stayed sitting but took out her laptop. Both Kat and Sutton knew she didn’t have another class until 11. She smiled at them and wished them both good luck before putting her earbuds in and working on an article. They both gave her one last wave before whisking out of the shop, the enticing smell of coffee and comfort trailing behind them.

 

Sutton and Kat walked in silence. They liked that: talking risked Kat getting lost in the middle of a sentence, or her attention dropping, and that was more hassle than it was worth. They would talk if they needed or wanted to, but wouldn’t talk to avoid silence. Besides, the silence was calming for both women, and they didn’t have to worry about it being awkward, because it never was.

Abruptly, Kat stopped in her tracks. In a second, her camera was lowered again, immediately after capturing a bluebird on a tree branch in front of them. They were walking through a greener area in the heart of campus, and once again, Kat smelled the tree smell and felt the breeze on her face. Sutton looked at Kat and smiled, knowing what she was thinking about, why she had a look of bliss on her face.

 

“It really _is_ pleasant. Too bad all of this will be covered in snow next month.” She said, teasing.

 

Kat looked at her and shot her a smile. “That’s okay, I like snow too.”

 

Sutton crinkled her nose. “You like it for the aesthetic.”

 

“Damn right.” Kat retorted, mirth laced in her voice.

It was not long before their paths diverged, and Kat sped-walked the entire rest of the way to hers. She was definitely going to be late, and she could always enjoy the weather later.

 

Turns out, she was _right_ on time, but just late enough that she could not sit in her favorite spot in the back: instead, she took the first spot she saw, which was in the very front and center (to her vague dismay). She didn’t register anything around her just yet, so relieved that she wasn’t late, but by then it was _too_ late, because there was already someone sitting next to her.

The first thing she noticed about her was the hijab she was wearing. Not the fact that it was a hijab, per se, but the fact that it was _bright red._ Kat’s mind immediately flew to the dappled sunlight on the trees, and she thought: _how good she would look against those trees, mid-morning light, medium exposure._ Only then did she realize that she had never seen this woman before, and as it was already halfway through her first semester at the Yale School of Art, she wondered what she was doing here. Next to her, no less, when everyone in this class distinctly knew that you _never_ wanted to sit in the front, no matter what.

You never did, because as she soon personally experienced, the professor liked to point out, loudly, what the flaws in your drawing were. It was a simple figure drawing class, with a model posing in the front, and the professor had taken a liking to Kat, which he knew never sat where she currently was. She spent the next two hours sitting through a running commentary of all her mistakes, biting back her tongue before she said something rash. She was one of nine students accepted into the undergraduate photography program at Yale, and she knew that any mistake, any sign of bad behavior, anything less than total and utter dedication to her cause, would get her removed and replaced by someone _much_ more dedicated (as the administration liked to remind her and the other eight). So, she suffered in anger, determined to draw the way she wanted to, despite the professor wanting otherwise.

 

When the hour struck, she almost bolted.

 

That is, she would have, except the mystery woman sitting next to her stood up and called to the professor. Her curiosity, her need to find out what she was doing here, kept Kat in her seat. She pretended to look at her drawing critically and slowly put away her materials, straining an ear to the two not far away from her.

 

“Professor! Hello, I am the transfer student you talked to over email.” She introduced herself, but Kat couldn’t see her face, as the woman’s back was facing her. She faintly noticed the wisps of hair escaping the back of her hijab, wondered what they would look like in yellow light.

 

What she saw next, however, shocked her.

 

The old, grouchy professor - that took too much joy tearing the confidence of young artists - broke into a large smile.

 

“Ms. El-Amin! What an utmost pleasure to have you here with us. I have heard only wonderful things from my colleagues at Tehran University!” His voice was boisterous, open towards her, and Kat’s jaw nearly touched the floor.

 

“Please, call me Adena. The pleasure is mine.” Adena held out her hand and shook the professor’s.

 

 _Adena_ . Kat was frozen, looking at the woman who made - arguably - the most unpleasant professor in all of Drawing break into a wide smile, stunned speechless. Adena made her way back to her seat to collect her things and leave, the professor off collecting his and talking to students in a gruff voice as they left, students in a flurry of movement and sound around her, and yet Kat still did not move. _Adena_.

 

_Adena, Adena, Adena._

 

_If only sounds could be captured in pictures._


	2. Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First meeting.

She left the lecture hall, wondering vaguely if it was weird to ask a complete stranger to take a whole photoshoot’s worth of photos. Adena was already gone, but Kat wished she could go back into that hell of a class for hours just to be able to see her face again. This was weird, this didn’t happen to Kat: she sometimes saw a beautiful person that she itched to take a photograph of, but there was never one that branded themselves on the back of her eyelids. She wanted to itch Adena’s red out of her eyes, out of her bloodstream, but every time she closed her eyes again, Adena was all she saw.

The breeze was calming against her burning face, and she struggled to take an even breath, her hands fluttering at her sides. Her hands never fluttered. This wasn’t happening.

 

_ What is this? _

 

There was too much. It felt like a panic attack, and she only rarely had those, it had been a while since - she wasn’t breathing. She gasped, trying to take a breath, but every time she closed her eyes to still herself, she saw the red, the red choking her, and she couldn’t -

 

“Are you okay?”

Time stopped.

 

Her eyes were brown, the color of warm soil. Adena was shorter than Kat, so she was looking upwards, and Kat noticed that her eyes were illuminated by the midday light shining above them, little slashes of eyelash shadow cutting through the light. Everything about her face was balanced, perfectly poised, beautiful, so beautiful, she wanted to capture perfection, put it in a frame, expose it -

 

“Hey, hey now - ”

 

Adena stepped forward and Kat realized that not only was she staring, she was also  _ still _ not breathing. With that, she took a gasping breath and coughed violently, her lungs trying desperately to suck in air. Her hand flew to her chest, and she registered a look of terror on Adena’s face.

 

“God. yes -” Kat tried to speak, but Adena was touching her, and  _ her hands were soft,  _ and she was still having trouble breathing.

“Just breathe, don’t speak.” Her accent was lilting. It sounded like melted caramel.

 

Kat collected herself. She had a panic attack because of the stranger that was currently holding her arms firmly and staring into her eyes with a look of concern and compassion. How could she explain that, how could she catch her  _ goddamn _ breath -

“I’m sorry, I had a panic attack, I couldn’t - I couldn’t breathe.” She blurted.

 

Adena’s features shifted. The light fell, Kat registered the light source nearly perfectly above the subject, that bright sun, causing dramatic softness to feather her cheekbones. Basic photography. She lost herself in those cheekbones for a second.

 

“God, I’m so sorry, that class must have been so hard on you! That professor would not leave you alone!”

 

With that, Kat realized she had a perfect alibi, and relaxed visibly. That class  _ had _ been really hard, and was probably why she had panicked in the first place. Not the fact that Adena smelled like the woods, like fresh something -  _ beach sage  _ \- or the fact that she was still close enough that Kat  _ could _ smell her. 

It suddenly made her uncomfortable, raw, to stand next to this perfect stranger. Something swooped painfully in her stomach, she called it anxiety - but something told her it could be something else - and before she thought about it she stepped back, and breathed normally. 

“Yeah, I never sit in the front.” Her voice was smaller than she wanted it to be. There was this magnetism that pulled at her throat, bringing her towards Adena. She was a sun, blazing, and Kat was merely a small planet, orbiting. There was something she couldn’t place about the way Adena was looking at her.

 

“Well, next time, we’ll sit in the back, then!” She smiled, and Kat’s world fell apart. 

 

There had never been light until that moment. It shone brighter than the sun, incessant, above her. She felt it pierce her chest like the bright light of an unexpected flash in the darkness, the perfect smirk of Adena’s mouth transforming the way the sun fell on her face, her muscles completely rearranged. Kat knew this, knew that there were thousands of ways a human could change their facial features, but all the facts, all the analysis flew out of her mind when she saw  _ Adena’s _ smile.

 

“Kat Edison.” She held out her hand, realizing they hadn’t been introduced.

 

Adena’s smile grew larger, if that was possible. She held out her hand, and Kat grasped it eagerly, once more overwhelmed with how soft it was: her brain was tangled in that sensory information for a split second, and she didn’t move.

 

“Adena El-Amin, pleased to meet you,  _ Kat _ .”

 

Her accent deepened slightly when she spoke her own name, and that should have prepared her, but Kat was caught completely off guard when she heard her own name spoken in that mouth. Adena lingered on it, accentuating the T, and Kat’s chest expanded minutely when it reached her ears. She never, ever wanted to hear her name spoken from anyone else again.

 

“So… I’ll see you next class, then?” Adena tried, and Kat realized once again that she was staring dumbly. Her hands flew to her camera, fingers itching to press the shutter, chest itching to have a picture of this gorgeous individual for her to keep.

 

But she couldn’t ask, her heart in her throat, pulsating and pushing the walls out, choking her again.

“Yeah, I’ll see you.” Her voice was even smaller, and she cursed it, cursed the world for making her crave so badly. She resigned herself in that moment to get a picture of Adena at one point, to capture her as best as she could.

 

Adena gave her one more small smile before she left, and it was so private that it made Kat’s chest hurt.

 

\-----

 

She loved painting.

 

Oil painting is one of the hardest medias to paint with, but Adena loved it all the same, because it  _ never  _ dried on the spot the way acrylic paint did. With acrylic, she was forced to go fast, to waste the moment at hand, but with oil paint -  _ Allah _ , she loved it, she loved being able to sit and languidly flutter her brush against the canvas, hot herbal tea in the other hand, basking in the comfort of being alone with her art. She sculpted the paint. A neglected dimension of paint was depth: layering it on, moving it gently with the tip of a paint brush, making it so someone could brush their fingers against a canvas and  _ feel _ the art. She was a fine artist by trade, but she despised the obsession with  _ flatness _ that the masters had. Don’t get her wrong, she could go to the Louvre and stare at  _ Raphael _ for hours, but that didn’t mean she found the flatness boring. She prefered layers and layers, and since oil paint took weeks to dry before she could put another layer on, her canvases took her months. The slow burn was sweet, she loved letting the art marinate in her mind, taking it excruciatingly slow. 

The play of light is the most important. Her current piece was dramatic because there was only a small illuminated area, like Rembrandt’s paintings, like… she paused, her brush still, trying to remember the name of the one that came to mind. It eluded her, and frustration bubbled at her throat for a second, and she let it burn, before exhaling and releasing it. She admired Rembrandt, his light play, the way he seemed to be able to manipulate it perfectly and effortlessly. She was trying to capture some of his mastery in this painting. It was a woman in a niqab, back turned to the viewer, turning slightly to where her face was beginning to enter the light. She was focusing on the eye, the focal point of the painting, and all of her tension had seeped out of her the second she put her brush against the painting. That was why she was an artist, a painter: her tension was nonexistent when she painted, she felt nothing but herself and the canvas, an extension of her body.

It was stressful, to take the plane. The extra controls and safety checks didn’t bother her as much as the  _ looks _ did. The parents were the worst, wrestling their children away from her as if she was about to attack them right then and there, instilling a belief in the children that they didn’t have before. The children didn’t see her as a threat: most often, they liked the color of what she wore, the bright blues and oranges, and looked at her with that childish curiosity and unbridled appreciation for pretty things. The older they got, the harder their eyes were, and she saw what society, what their  _ parents _ , instilled in them.

Then she arrived here, bone-tired, and she was completely alone in a brand new city, a brand new  _ continent _ , where the women’s hair was exposed to the sun and the laws made people free. The terror, the anxiety of it had gripped her throat and squeezed, and she hadn’t been able to breathe for hours. It had released enough for her to breathe somewhat normally once she had gotten “home” and taken out her paint. It took her two hours to calm her shaking fingers, and once she had initially calmed down the exhaustion hit her like a freight train.

The next day wasn’t better, even though it meant she could go into campus and make more art. She hoped to meet someone, anyone, something to hold on to. She was so weak, she felt like she was drowning. She missed home, even though home meant hell, and she was afraid of what missing it meant. Her thoughts ran and her heart raced all day, feeling like a caged animal in a strange land, and she only stilled when she went into her first class and entered a place in her mind where she could draw.

 

That’s when she saw  _ her. _

 

She was almost late to class, breathing hard, walking in with a gust of fresh air from outside and the faint smell of coffee, and Adena noticed so many things at once. Her outfit. The expensive camera hanging from her neck, and the way her hand fluttered at the shutter subconsciously. The color of her skin, how it reminded her of wet sand. Her  _ hair _ . Adena had been transfixed immediately, pulled into her gravity.

She sat down, and Adena couldn’t help another glance at her. She was beautiful, striking, soft. Adena could paint her. She would, she would softly fill her cheeks and play with the light on her hair. It was rude to stare, so she looked away, but as soon as she did, she missed the vision of the beauty next to her like a hole in her chest.

The class was hell for the mystery woman next to her, and every time Adena snuck glances, she saw her teeth gritted and hand white around her pencil. Adena wanted to comfort, her heart longed to hold this coffee woman against her and fight the professor antagonizing her. It took every ounce of her self control not to say something, knowing she was barely safe here, her visa sustained seemingly by nothing but Allah’s grace. She fought to keep a smile on her face and grace in her voice when she introduced herself, wanting nothing but to get as far away from the despicable man as she could. When she turned around, the woman next to her was frozen in place, seemingly shocked at what she had just gone through, and Adena resolved herself to wait a little ways outside in order to make sure she was okay.

She had been marveling at the weather when the woman exited the lecture hall. Adena, from several meters behind her, could see her hands visibly shaking, and she waited to see if she would be okay on her own. It was only when she saw that the woman was visibly not breathing - _ and the white hot terror that struck in her chest at that sight  _ \- that she approached her to help her.

It was selfish, and indifferent to her predicament, but Adena first noticed how beautiful she was. She was taller, so she looked down, and little curly shadows basked her face. She looked stricken, panicked, but Adena only saw beauty. She only barely registered that the woman was still not breathing, so she shook herself out of her reverie and stepped closer. When she finally sucked in air, Adena felt something release in her. The tension, like painting.

Her name was Kat Edison. Adena played it over in her mouth, watched Kat’s reaction to her name, didn’t know how to interpret it. She loved it, either way, loved the way her name felt. She felt the smile on her lips, she felt the familiar aching warmth in her chest, was slightly afraid of what it meant. She didn’t dwell on it too long, instead, taking advantage of the way it made her feel giddy and heavy with happiness, and kept smiling.

 

_ If only sounds could be captured in paintings. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow? Chapter 2? Where'd you come from?
> 
> The pits of my brain.
> 
> Ignore the tenses, they're wrong, I know, and ignore my blatant lack of knowledge about Connecticut weather in mid-semester.
> 
> Come yell at me: intueor.tumblr.com


	3. Mirror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Friends^TM find out about Adena + Adena does more art, as per the usual

Kat couldn’t stop taking pictures. Everything looked more beautiful, brighter, she needed to capture everything. She saw red everywhere, a haze, and captured it with her camera, over and over and over. Her finger was frozen in place over the shutter, her mind frozen in another world.

That’s how Sutton and Jane walked all the way behind her and stopped, both women realizing that Kat definitely wasn’t present. They shared a familiar look of concern and warm affection that both of them felt in each other for a second, before they simultaneously turned back to Kat. Any passerby would have been easily fooled by the beautiful woman - with legs for days - that was passionately taking pictures of everything, but not her best friends: they saw mania, a crazed loneliness behind the pupils that pulled her towards the uncapturable.

She was periodically forgetting to breathe, and that should have tipped her off, but Kat ignored what her mind was persistently telling her, because she just  _ needed _ to take the next picture, she  _ knew _ it was the right one,  _ just this one - _

 

Sutton was in front of her.

 

Her mouth twisted in a set line, her blue eyes sparkling and fierce -  _ she could take a beautiful picture of them if the exposition was just right _ \- laced with worry. Jane was hanging behind, leaning on one foot uncertainly. Kat was brought back into reality in that moment like a cool stream of water on her face, opening her eyes, and she dropped her camera down to hang on her neck and inhaled for  _ the first time in what seemed like minutes. _

She exhaled brokenly, looking at her friends. Knowing that they wouldn’t accept it, she didn’t bother apologizing, and cut right to the chase with a flurry of heartbeats and fluttery fingertips. 

 

“I met a girl.”

 

The change in their demeanor would have been funny, if all three women weren’t acutely aware of the fact that the subject of her sentence had sent Kat into a manic episode. Both stepped into her personal bubble, the gum stretching around familiar forms and welcoming them with no resistance. Sutton’s hand was on her shoulder blade and Jane’s on her arm, and Kat took a second to thank the universe for how knowing her friends were, how they were distinctly aware of how  _ much _ physical contact grounded her when her nerves felt frayed at every edge, and how they knew to act on it immediately. She remembered the countless mornings she had woken up with Sutton’s hair on her face and Jane’s legs draped over her own thighs, a tumbling mess of bodies and blankets and hair, and how at home and comfortable she felt in her body in those moments. How her heart had longed to take all the pictures in the world so she could revisit that feeling at every moment.  _ Bless them. _

 

“Tell us everything, babe.” Jane said, with a smile toying at her face. The tension had leaked out of her friends’ bodies, she realized, the second it had melted out of hers. She let a breath out -  _ her parents were always reminding her that breathing was a calming mechanism _ \- and prepared to spill everything.

 

\-----

 

They were in Kat’s dorm this time, choosing privacy over the homely feel of the coffee shop. Kat took pride in the perfection of her dorm aesthetic: there where hanging lights, lots of dark wood and metal in exquisite juxtaposition, polaroids on the walls, and her favorite blanket nest where her and her friends liked to sit. If she laid down in it and looked up, she could see strings of lights in the foreground and glow-in-the-dark star stickers on her ceiling in the background. Even the picture opportunity was perfectly staged, and she took it more than she’d care to admit. Her dorm was her home, her safe space, and she only brought the people closest to her in it.

That is how she found herself sitting in The Nest with a cup of tea, facing the two people that mattered the most to her in this world besides her family. They were looking at her expectantly, and once more, Kat was struck with how selfless they were, how ready to help her at any moment. She thought the caring would split her chest: it seemed almost solid behind her ribs.

 

“Her name is Adena El-Amin.” She started softly, somewhat unsure of how to begin, but once she did, she found that the dam had broken and she couldn’t stop.

 

“She’s a transfer student from Tehran University and she was in art today and art was so horrible because the professor wouldn’t leave me alone and she was next to me and that’s probably why I had a panic attack afterwards and I couldn’t breathe -”

 

“Babe.” Sutton’s blue eyes calmed her immediately and she took a breath. Not dark like the deep ocean, constricting, drowning, but a freeing blue, like the sky. “A panic attack?” She nudged, gently.

 

“Yeah, after class. I couldn’t, for the  _ life _ of me, get the color of her hijab out from behind my eyes.” Kat gesticulated wildly, color painting her cheeks. The embarrassment was flooding back into her marrow, a painful reminder that she had panicked over a  _ very  _ pretty girl, pretty much as soon as she had met her. “Every time I closed them to try to take a goddamn  _ breath _ , I saw her.”

 

She was afraid of what they thought and knew that if she saw their faces, she’d analyze their expressions so much it’d make her ache, so she looked down and picked at a blanket.

 

“What happened then?” Jane prodded, and when Kat glanced up, relief rushed through her with the knowledge that the faces of her friends were open and free of judgement.

 

“She came up to me, because apparently she was there.” Kat continued, careful to keep her voice a normal level of slow. “She thought I was freaking out because of how much of a  _ dick _ the professor was to me, and since I obviously wasn’t going to tell a complete stranger that I was panicking over her, I ran with it.” She paused, and her friends stayed silent, because they  _ knew _ there was one more piece.

 

“And… and she promised to sit with me next class.” Kat finished, a small smile creeping on her lips.

 

The smile that broke across her friends’ faces, she thought, rivaled the sun.

 

“Sit… with… you…” Jane said, deliberately slowly, leaning forward into Kat’s space. Sutton smiled, the full force of her brightness laying waste to Kat’s resolve. Her face broke out into a smile that matched her friends’, and at that, Jane tackled her with a hug into the mattress. “Sit with you! She’s going to sit with you, the beautiful hijab-adorned stranger!”

 

“From Tehran!” Sutton piped up, crawling onto Kat’s other side, all three of them cuddling comfortably in the small space. “You’re gonna fall so hard, babygirl.” She mumbled, her face curled into Kat’s mass of hair.

 

“God, I know…” Kat whispered, staring up at the glowing stars, wondering if in them, she could find the answers to the warm ache in her chest.

 

\-----

 

Chamomile tea is her favorite for pensive nights.

Abstaining from alcohol means that what would end up being a great and extensive wine expertise for other people, becomes tea expertise in her. Cucumber mint for energy, cinnamon for cold days, chai when she feels indulgent, and chamomile when she needs to perch on her balcony and think. Adena loves wearing the hijab because it sets her on a different standard of beauty, breaks her away from the expectations of society that she often feels like chains around her throat, but she also cannot deny the pure, unadulterated joy she gets from the breeze ruffling her hair. The tea is the perfect temperature, she notes, the color of amber under her brush. A bit of white, hidden underneath.

 

The color of Kat’s skin is burned in her eyes.

 

In France, they call her people's skin  _ cafe-au-lait.  _ Coffee with milk. “Lightskin”, they say in America, but Adena prefers the French way. Coffee with milk insinuates there are darker tones that existed, or exist, and that’s the way she thinks of Kat’s hair. She can’t get the color of Kat’s skin out of her eyes. Adena feels unbalanced, wobbly, and every time she closes her eyes to still herself, she sees the brown, it takes over her mind, a warm blanket filling every dark crevice.

She sips her tea instead of mulling over what that means, and cynically realizes that that’s the opposite of what the tea is supposed to be doing. This isn’t working, she knows, the color stuck in her throat and in her teeth, and she knows exactly what she needs to do but she’s avoiding it. 

After class, she went to an art store to buy more paint. She now owns more brown than she needs for her professional purposes, and she knows it wasn’t a coincidence.

She moves over to the open space in the apartment that she promptly turned into her personal studio. There were a few unused canvases there, and she grabs one -  _ it’s too big but she doesn’t care _ \- and a few paints and brushes. Most of the time, she prefers to marinate in her art, to let it rest in the spaces between her ribs like solid matter, but there are some moments where everything that holds her so composed snaps at the seams.

 

She disappears into her art.

 

Nothing exists except for a brush and a glob of paint -  _ Oil paint should have longer than this to dry -  _ she scrubs, furiously, filling out her hair, the slope of her neck -  _ there should be more smoothness there, you can only do that after a few weeks of drying _ \- the background, mixed with the foreground, bleeding together - _ sloppy, sloppy work - _ she stops breathing, stops existing, she is nothing but a tense coil, an extension of her brush -  _ you’re losing yourself -  _ time passes, minutes, hours, she stays immobile and in flurried movement, everything blending -

 

She takes a breath.

 

It’s done, she knows, she feels it in the marrow of her bones.

 

It’s Kat, and it’s embarrassing how accurately Adena recalled her from memory. She is tilted towards the viewer, a side view of her hugging herself, twisted. She’s topless, because Adena wanted more  _ skin, selfish  _ \- and the background is bright, blaring red. Adena distantly realizes it’s the hijab she wore today, for confidence. Kat’s face makes Adena lose herself momentarily, because she violently remembers how Kat looked when she didn’t breathe, when she was panicking, or when she hung onto Adena’s tongue as it clicked over the  _ t _ in her name. Adena painted her open to interpretation, pensive, knowing, almost like a modern day Mona Lisa.

 

She is painfully aware that it only took her two hours, and that it is also probably the best work she has ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am actually French, nod to my people right there. I have always loved the phrase "cafe-au-lait," how accurate it is, and all the imagery it entails. 
> 
> Come yell at me: intueor.tumblr.com
> 
> credits to feveredreams.tumblr.com for making me obsessed with parallels and also generally just being an amazing writer. Go check out her ao3: exprsslyfrbidden.
> 
> Love you all. Thank you for the kind comments and kudos and keep watch for the next chapters!


	4. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adena and Kat are Thirsty^TM

Adena quickly gets used to the way of life in America. The side glances and open stares don’t stop, but she excels in her classes, as she knew she would. Connecticut is much cleaner than Iran, but America is colder than Iran, in both weather and social behavior. Everyone is too polite, too fake, not  _ real _ enough: that is, when people actually approach her. She found herself isolated, due to social stigma, and she was disappointed that her fears regarding America came true. That being said, there was a small Muslim community that she found herself immersed in, intrigued in the mix between the Muslim faith and American culture that she saw in some individuals. They welcomed her warmly, spoke her tongue, ate her food, and the raw emotion and companionability that suddenly filled the cold hole of American people shocked her and filled her with joy. With her new home established, she could find her footing in the frozen land she found herself in. Almost every person she spoke to was self centered and self established, the same rhetoric of “excelling” spat out at her at every turn.

 

That is, everyone except for Kat Edison.

 

If the social circles she found herself exposed to are ice chasms, Kat is a blazing conflagration. Her smile is soft in the way that small flames are. Her laugh blazes through the air. Behind her eyes, sparks dance. And when the softness of her arm brushes Adena’s shoulder when she sits down next to her, Adena feels like she is combusting. She tries not to think about it too hard, tries not to think about the flickering fire in her chest when she looks at Kat, the way her mouth curls up at the edge without her meaning it to.

The problem is that she is sure Kat doesn’t feel the same way.

It pains her to admit, but she looks at Kat, examines Kat, way more than she should. And often, when she talks -  _ flirts -  _ with Kat, Kat’s eyes take on a faraway look, and she zones out. And Adena knows what Kat looks like when she is invested in something, because she’s also seen her take pictures. She knows that the way Kat acts around her is definitely  _ not _ interested. 

That, and the fact that the  _ gorgeous _ male model that they had last week flirted with her and Kat blushed. Adena thinks they have a date. Again, she tries not to think about how that fills her with dread and something very close to jealousy.

 

“ _ Hi. _ ”

 

It’s Kat, Kat’s lips,  _ very, agonizingly _ , close to her ear, in a guttural whisper, and Adena’s brain short circuits with the effort it takes not to ravish her right then and there.

 

“ _ Kat _ , h-hello, Kat,  _ Allah. _ ” Adena spins around and takes a step back from Kat’s alluring heat.

 

Adena had been contemplating the trees outside, as she still had hours until her next class, when Kat surprised her. She looks up, trying to calm her racing heart that is racing for reasons it  _ shouldn’t be _ , when Kat speaks again, her bottom lip catching her top teeth in a way that draws Adena’s eyes like a magnet.

 

“So… I know that, you, um - mentioned that you had a class at two on Thursdays, and I don’t have one because I already finished mine for the day, and um - I was, well, wondering if maybe you wanted to go get coffee together? Or if you don’t like coffee that’s fine, we can -” Adena had let her ramble, let her hands flutter nervously, but cut her off there.

 

She takes Kat’s hands in her own and marvels at the softness of them for a split second.

 

“ _ Kat _ , yes. I would love coffee.” The smile that splits Kat’s face made it worth it, but what she did next nearly stopped Adena’s heart.

 

With her face broken into a brilliant smile, she surges forward and wraps Adena into a hug.

_ Allah _ , she’s missed physical contact. Suddenly, everything becomes Kat, and the smell of her and her hair and her heat envelops Adena, her body pressing into hers, heat everywhere, heat and smell and touch, the softness of everything overwhelming her promptly, and a sigh escapes her lips before she can stifle it, right into Kat’s ear. 

Adena’s face is  _ on fire _ and she shudders away from Kat, embarrassment lighting her up everywhere. What is up with her, practically moaning at a hug? She casts her eyes down, avoids Kat, avoids retribution for her actions.

 

“Adena - … Are you okay?” Kat steps into her space, gently grabbing her arm and infuriatingly rubbing gentle circles, and Adena curses the universe for making Kat smell so  _ good _ .

 

Adena looks up and sees only concern in Kat’s eyes, and with her bottom lip between her teeth she decides to tell the truth. She rubs her neck, feeling the baby hairs escaping her hijab, desperate to distract herself as she admits.

 

“Yes, of course - it’s just… It’s been awhile, since - you know, someone… hugged me.” Adena’s face burns again and she refuses to look at Kat, the memory of the sigh replaying through her head.

 

“Oh, Adena, I’m so sorry, I can give you so many hugs if you want, I love them!” Kat’s face lights up, and she gravitates closer. Her arms open, and another wave of her perfume and natural body smell makes Adena dizzy.

 

She thinks distantly that that is  _ not _ a good idea, that very quickly she might not want to stop. She is powerless, however, when Kat pulls her in again, and melts with the bliss.

 

_ Fuck. _

 

\-----

 

Kat sees Adena from far away. She is picture perfect, a statue, staring up at the trees, and Kat snaps a picture. She promises to herself to show it to Adena later, even though she knows that that’s a lie.

It had been weeks, weeks since she had first met Adena, and since that first meeting, Kat had burned. Every day, she soon found out, she saw Adena, and every day she dug herself deeper into the hole she found herself in. She had had countless lovers over the years, men, women, and everything in between, and she had loved the bursts of flame that they all caused, burning up swiftly in roaring infernos. However, with Adena, it was different. It was roaring, it lit her up, but at the same time, it lasted. She hadn’t expected it, but with every passing day the coals in her stomach burned hotter. Sometimes, when Adena talked, when the molten caramel that was her voice reached Kat’s ears, she would dissociate violently with the force of the pleasure she felt. She loved the way Adena said her name, was obsessed with it. Oftentimes she would ask her dumb questions or do dumb things just so she could hear Adena exclaim “Kat!” with her lips curled up into a smile.

That’s why a burst of adrenaline ran through her veins, suddenly carrying her forward towards the slender, pensive woman.

 

She put her ear close to Adena’s, and whispered as sensually as she could muster.

 

_ “Hi.” _

 

She feels the air displacement caused by Adena’s shudder, and Kat thinks for a moment that she may be repulsed.

Then she hears how breathless Adena really is when she says her name again, followed by a gasped  _ Allah _ .

 

The truth is, she doesn’t know how to read Adena El-Amin. Doesn’t know how to read her curling smiles, her wisps of hair curling at the nape of her neck causing the wisping in her abdomen, her slender fingers that drift on Kat’s arms for split seconds when she greets her. She is wary of the cultural difference between them two, conscious of the fact that she may simply be overly friendly. Most importantly, she doesn’t want to scare Adena away with the pure force of her adoration, that only seems to grow in size every single day. And every day she spends learning more about the incredible, impossible talent and worth that was Adena, the more she convinces herself that such a woman could  _ never _ reciprocate.

 

Still, she hopes. 

 

Hopes that the breathlessness and the shaking of her body means that she wants to kiss Kat as much as Kat wants to kiss her.

That’s when impulsive decision #2 comes in, along with a wave of nerves that hits her like a brick wall. The words come out of her without her accord, asking her to coffee, and she rambles, but all the while her brain is observing Adena, her smile, her mirth, is she just taking pity on me? Is she -

 

Saying yes?

 

Kat stops short when she feels Adena’s hands on hers. They are soft and slender but strong, and she imagines them drawing circles on the insides of her thighs. Her knees go weak.

She does say yes, and just like that, all the nerves get replaced by liquid relief. She feels the smile pull at her face, feels the joy like she is suddenly made of gold.

 

Impulsive decision #3: she hugs Adena.

 

She smells foreign, something she wouldn’t smell here. Its enticing, it’s  _ intoxicating _ . It pulls air into her lungs. She feels the entirety of Adena’s body against hers, smells the heat of her neck and has to physically stop herself from nuzzling behind Adena’s ear. Adena’s fingertips rest on the bottom of her shoulderblades, and Kat swears that they are burning holes in her shirt. She is so close, so close to the woman she had wanted so much she  _ glowed _ , and her brain shuts down with the knowledge.

That’s when Adena sighs into her ear, and it sounds like exactly what Kat is feeling but even more, rippling with desire. It runs through Kat’s entire body, lighting every nerve that had turned off with a blaze that rivaled the fire in her chest.

Adena shudders away from her, and Kat catalogs the sound for later because suddenly she thinks she did something wrong, that it was her fault, its always her fault, she’s always the one dissociating, it’s always -

 

Adena looks guilty, uncomfortable, and Kat blurts out comfort without thinking.

 

When she finds out that she had simply been starved of physical comfort for so long, Kat breathes again. It isn’t her fault, she isn’t at fault. It’s not her fault, but what if it is? What if Adena is lying and she found out Kat wants her so badly and she’s disgusted at that fact? 

There is only one way to find out, and Kat tests it by surging forward into her space a second time.

 

A tremor runs through Adena’s body and she practically melts into Kat’s embrace, her muscles fluid under Kat’s gentle grip, and Kat starts to think that maybe, just maybe, she’s wrong.

  
_ Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOAH, A CHAPTER.
> 
> Sorry it took me so LONG. I am STILL ALIVE. Barely. College started again so, whoops, never gonna get this done.
> 
> ANyways, its my headcanon that Kat's pan. I think she wouldn't care about the gender. ALso I don't wanna write about her discovering her sexuality, I'd rather her be in Denial about Adena liking her back.
> 
> Hit me up at intueor.tumblr.com and keep an eye out for updates every fortnight or so who knows
> 
> Ill update when I'm not slaving away at Linear Algebra??


	5. Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More thirst.

They go to Blue State Coffee, walking in comfortable silence. At one point, Kat’s fingers brush Adena’s hand, and Adena feels her hand tingle for the rest of the walk. She thought, how hard would it be to just reach over and grab her hand, feel her soft warmth connecting their bodies together. But Adena didn’t, kept mute, and crossed her arms so as to not do something rash.

 

Kat was thinking the same thing. Adena noticed when she bit her bottom lip, but made no comment. 

 

They got to the coffee shop and Kat opened the door for her. She appraised the taller woman, all awkward energy and nervous smiles. Fluttering lips and fingers. She was bursting with energy, and Adena thinks, not for the first time, how quickly she could fluctuate. Sometimes, she would bounce off the walls, and sometimes, she would appear almost dead in her lack of movement. It was worrying, but Adena thought that maybe she had too much of an eye for that kind of thing; and besides, Kat wasn’t hers to worry about.

However, when they enter the coffee shop, Adena’s gaze is ripped away from the crook of Kat’s neck as she admires the surroundings. Sometimes, in her life, Adena finds places that inexplicably feel like home: Blue State Coffee was one of those places. The soft light, the hanging lights, the juxtaposition between wood and rustic metal, the brushed steel chairs, and the  _ sound _ . It was just the sound someone might record to put on a “background noise” playlist, right next to rain sounds and white noise. She closes her eyes, relishes in the noise that wraps her around, and just breathes.

 

Kat is transfixed. Adena’s eyes fluttered shut as soon as she had looked around the coffee shop, and Kat felt like the world came to a stop. Adena’s eyelids seem to command the butterflies in her chest: she can see her eyes roll up, she her chest expand, and Kat feels her world zoom into the minute details like the micro settings in her camera. The little hairs of her perfect eyebrows, or her fluttering eyelashes. The little bit of skin on her abdomen that was exposed by the expansion of her chest. The slenderness of her fingers, the way they trace the outside of her thighs, lightly. The small gasp she sucks in through her teeth.  _ God _ , she’s gorgeous.

She tries so hard not to grab her camera, but it is instinctual, and before she knows it, the shutter clicks.

 

Adena hears the shutter, and it jolts her back to the present. She turns to Kat, and is met with a look of pure terror. Kat’s hands were on her camera, pointed towards Adena, and it was clear to Adena that it hadn’t been a voluntary action. Her breath was stuttering out of her mouth audibly, and Adena could see the physical panic filling Kat’s through. Lower, her fingers were shaking uncontrollably, an earthquake in the making, and Adena put away her initial shock in favor of covering Kat’s hands with her own and smiling at her, hoping to convey comfort, to convey that  _ it’s okay, I understand _ .

Kat sucked in a breath, making to speak, and Adena leaned forward to press a finger to her lips.

 

Kat thought she was done for. Adena turned around, a look of shock, of betrayal, when she heard the shutter, and Kat thought that she had never experienced terror before this day. She felt her body go into full panic mode and her mind wrench itself away from her body in order to avoid retribution, and the world suddenly felt muted with the force of her anxiety. It was drowning her, and she couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t wrench her eyes away from Adena’s, her fingers away from the trigger. 

It was sudden: Adena’s hands were on hers, and warmth filled her again, her mind and body existing as one once more, breath rushing into her lungs like a tidal wave. She tried to speak, tried to explain,  _ please understand _ , but Adena rushed forward.

Kat thought, for the second time that day, that she was done for.

Because, she thought, logically, the only reason Adena would come towards her that fast would be to kiss her. And her mind rebelled against that thought, because  _ why would Adena want to kiss her _ , but she was coming towards Kat, so what could Kat do, other than part her lips, partly in shock, and partly in hopeful preparation - 

But a warm finger met her open lips instead.

 

Adena felt the wetness of Kat’s mouth, and didn’t want to think about why Kat’s mouth was open -  _ it was shock, only shock  _ \- or the fact that she really would’ve preferred it to be her lips. She stares at Kat’s warm brown eyes, and tries to speak, tries to open her mouth, but her raw need feels like a ball in her throat, so instead she reaches down.

She parts Kat’s fingers and turns the camera towards both of them, further stepping into Kat’s space.  _ Intoxicating _ . She clicks the “view” button on the camera, and vaguely notices that it’s the same camera her father owned when she was little, the one she played with with her too-small fingers and then her growing fingers and then her long and slender adult fingers that learned to diligently take shot after shot. It’s like coming home, and Adena almost cries with the intimacy of it.

 

Adena looks at her after she puts her finger on Kat’s mouth, and she looks like she’s breaking, or being torn, or both. Kat just stares, transfixed, frozen. Her mouth parts, a mirror of Kat’s, and she looks like she’s trying to say something, but her hands choose to drift down and her body closer.

She grabs the camera and Kat decides to look at her, again, or maybe she doesn’t decide, because with Adena, it feels like nothing is voluntary. Adena knows where the buttons are, and Kat marvels with an overpowering sense of awe how Adena can stroke something that is so dear to Kat’s heart, so integral to her personality, with such confidence and surety of touch. She thinks Adena’s been around this camera before, but she can’t speak: her heart feels like it’s in her throat. By grabbing her camera, Adena might as well have reached into her chest and held her heart.

 

She clicks on the view button.

A picture of her pops up, and she marvels at how Kat could have such deep instincts that she could take such a gorgeous photo with absolutely no setup and time. A true candid. Adena’s eyes were closed, and she was looking up, breathing deeply. The lighting was perfect.  _ Everything _ was perfect, and if she didn’t know before, she knew now why Kat had been accepted into the school of photography. Worst - or  _ best  _ \- of all, the picture conveyed so much emotion. It was so raw, so intimate, because all of Adena’s defenses were down in that moment, and it was the most perfect piece of art Adena had ever seen.

 

“Adena -”

 

“ _ It’s so beautiful. _ ”

 

It was a marvel that she spoke past the ball of emotion in her throat, but it came out of her in a throaty whisper, unbidden. She was staring at the picture, her eyes shining and her vision shimmering. Her fingers trembled around the camera and Kat felt the intense need to grab her and pull her close, enough to make her arm shake, but she held herself back.

 

“Thank you.” She whispered, instead.

 

Adena looked at her then, and handed her back the camera (Kat felt like she could breathe again). She looked into Kat’s eyes, deep and strong and unrelenting.

 

“I understand.”

 

And Kat could breathe some more.

 

They get coffee. The smell makes Kat shudder with pleasure and she completely misses the way that makes Adena’s eyes grow dark with want. They sit in a booth, in the back, and sip their drinks as Kat learns more and more about the woman sitting across from her. Her life in Iran, her decision to come to America, and how she felt about living here. The crushing loneliness, her art. Kat burns with the need to see what she’s painted. The light in Adena’s eyes when she talks about it is enough to convince her they are masterpieces. It’s unnerving the way Adena looks at her, the way her eyes seem to burn and rip away Kat’s layers of defense to expose the soft, fleshy parts of her soul to Adena’s mercy. She doesn’t particularly dislike the sentiment, thinks she could get used to it, if she was allowed.

 

Adena has never divulged so much about herself to anyone else the way she does with Kat. It surprises her how Kat’s warm gaze seems to cause her to word vomit. The fact that Kat doesn’t dissociate once during their conversation in the booth makes Adena beam with pleasure. Kat was  _ interested _ in what she had to say, and that was so enough for Adena. She talks about her art after a while, and feels herself slip into the comfort of talking about her creative endeavors. She is so wrapped up in explaining her latest painting that she doesn’t notice the way Kat looks at her, like she would do anything for Adena, like she’d worship her if asked. She misses the way her lips part. 

 

There is a lull in the conversation, and they slip into comfortable silence. Kat realizes two things at once: one, they’ve been talking for almost two hours, and two, she is suddenly overcome with the need to take a picture of Adena. She doesn’t know how to ask, how to execute, but this is one of the times she can’t fight it, and she feels it build in her throat until there are tears in her eyes with the effort not to reach for her camera.

 

“Can I take pictures of you?”

 

It was so soft Adena almost missed it. She turned to the other woman, who was hunched back in her seat, with her head down. A curtain of hair was hiding her face, so Adena reached forward and brushed it out of the way, looking Kat in the eye with what she hoped was a brilliant smile.

 

“You may.”

 

It was like breaking a dam.

Kat’s arms surged up and she had taken a picture almost before the sentence was over. Everything poured out of her, the need to capture Adena, and the shutter clicked over and over. Only once she felt slightly satiated, she stopped, and only then could she breathe once more.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Adena looked at her, with a small smile, like she understood what Kat felt in every fiber of her soul.

Kat wonders if she would want to paint her.

 

Before Adena even finished her sentence, Kat was taking pictures. She kept looking at her, not sure what her face was expressing but so sure of what her heart felt. She loved the grace with which Kat took pictures, how she slipped into an entirely different person. She thinks the picture will forever be burned behind her eyelids, the twitch of her fingers. The way Kat squints.

She wishes she could paint Kat so badly it burns in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I know where this story is going? Maybe.  
> Am I going to pull the story out for as long as fucking possible until then? Yes.
> 
> Yell at: intueor.tumblr.com


	6. Convergence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone meets.

“You  _ WHAT? _ ”

 

Sutton and Jane were looking at her like she had just told them the sky was falling down. They were sitting on a bench in a park space in the center of campus, sunlight streaming down, coffee in hand. Kat had led them here after passing by a coffee shop, to, quote: “Tell you gals something incredibly important.” Jane and Sutton had looked at her excitedly, pleaded for her to spill early, but she didn’t back down.

Finally, they had sat down, and Kat had taken a deep breath before telling her two best friends that she had had a date with the woman she was so deeply, obviously, smitten by.

 

And simultaneously, they screamed.

 

Kat’s smiling, looking at these beautiful women: the normally talkative, angry Tiny Jane rendered speechless, and the level-headed, calm Sutton’s face contorted into a gasp. She says “Oh my God,” and then says it again, shaking her head.

 

“You have two seconds before I start yelling at you for not spilling immediately.” Jane says after she gathers herself.

 

Kat laughs and dips her head down, her hair - free, today - tumbling down in front of her face to hide her growing blush. She looks up to the sky for strength, or for a way to banish the permanent smile on her face, or perhaps both, and opens her mouth, everything that happened yesterday spilling out of her mouth.

After she ends, the two women are once again rendered speechless. Kat  _ still _ can’t get the smile off her face, big and painful now that she has gone over her hours spent with Adena. Soft skin and intoxicating smells drift to the forefront of her mind again, and Kat’s smile gets dreamy as she remembers the goddess that is Adena, her touches, her sharp eyes. Her eyes flutter shut, and that, and the fact that she’s sitting on the ground, facing the bench and away from the path, is the reason that she doesn’t see who walks up until a velvet voice hits her ears.

 

“Kat.”

 

She spins around faster than she thought possible and is faced with a vision that takes her breath away. Adena is facing her, looking down, and the sun is shining from behind her, shaping her in a golden halo of light. She looks like an angel. She  _ is _ an angel, Kat knows in the marrow of her bones. She is wearing a soft pink hijab that is folded differently than it has been in the past (not that Kat would notice) and a crop top revealing a view that makes Kat’s mouth water. She can’t speak, she can’t breathe, frozen to the bone -

 

“Hi! I’m Sutton Brady!”

 

Sutton jumps up and holds her hand out to shake with a bright voice. Kat thanks all the gods in the observable universe for her best friend and she inhales sharply and suddenly, taking her bearings. Adena is shaking Sutton’s hand, smiling, introducing herself to Jane, and Kat cannot believe that her best friends are shaking Adena’s hand, she’s still on the ground, she can’t believe Adena is here: what are  _ the odds _ that this would happen. She stands, suddenly, brokenly, and tries to fight the rush in her head.

 

Suddenly, all of them are looking at her, and she realizes they asked her something, what did they  _ ask _ , and she can’t breathe because it’s all too much.

 

Sutton and Jane know, they reach for her, she feels an arm, and the contact jolts her into breath. “What.” She managed to exhale, asking them what they said, pleading that that single word would be enough.

Jane smiles a small smile and says, softly: “We asked if you would want to go get coffee.”

Kat smiles at them, then, a smile that feels like her face is breaking, or maybe her world, breaking and opening to let golden ambrosia flow through, and into her chest, and she nods. They are holding coffee, they already got coffee today, but her friends already know she would be down for more. Sutton rubs her hand gently and she notices, filing the gesture away for later, for sad days. Jane and Sutton pull her forward, and she stares at the backs of her best friends and this beautiful other soul that came into her life, and her heart has never felt so full.

 

It was only much later that Kat realized Adena’s eyes never left her.

 

\-----

 

They are in a different coffee shop this time, and Kat is thankful. It is dimmer here, but louder, more grungy. The normal shop has so many memories, and the emotions seem to stick to her throat at the moment, so the fact that she is in a different place makes the fact that she is currently with three of the most important people in her life  _ together _ much easier. She sits, sips her iced coffee, and observes all the colors and too-bright sounds clouding her mind. 

Adena sees Kat, and worry clouds her mind. Kat looks faraway, gone, like there is too much, and she wonders if this was a good idea, to bring her here. She didn’t want to impose, what if she imposed on them? What if they had other plans, what if -

 

Sutton puts a hand on Adena’s, gently. She senses her worry like a tangible thing.

 

“She’ll be okay. She just won’t talk much at the moment.” Adena tears her eyes away from Kat and looks at Sutton with a tangible gratefulness. Sutton and Jane, they know, they look at her like they know exactly what Adena feels, worrying after someone that is so overwhelmed they aren’t even there. Sutton decides on honesty, to calm Adena’s heart.

 

“She talks so much about you,” she admits quietly. “This is probably really overwhelming, to have two people she cares so much about, meeting another, and all of a sudden like this.”

 

Adena breathes in, slowly, and her heart expands three sizes with the love and affection she feels for Kat. It scares her, a little, to feel so much for someone she’d only known for a few weeks.

 

“That’s why she’s going to stay silent, I think.” Jane pipes in, looking at Adena, apprehensively, wondering if she would be okay with that.

 

Adena turns back to them and huffs out a breath. “I know. I’ve noticed times like this. Or when she needs to take pictures, and can’t help herself.” She smiles, softly, wringing her hands, thinking of Kat, hoping hard that it wouldn’t offend the two ladies in front of her that she knew so much of Kat’s mannerisms.

She was so wrong. They both break into smiles that shine so brightly at her she blinks, and look at each other, a mound of information being passed through each other’s eyes in a second, then look back at her.

 

“Perfect,” says Sutton, leaning forward in synchrony with Jane. “Because we have so much to ask you, and we wanted to make sure you were one hundred percent comfortable with this situation.”

 

Adena looks at Kat once more, staring deeply into space, lost in thirty-five dimensions, and smiles to herself. She doesn’t know how she got here, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t like it.

 

\-----

 

“I miss my family, honestly.” Adena blows out a breath, her cheeks expanding. It was hard to admit that to Americans, hard to explain how familial bonds worked in such a cold, distant culture, hard to explain how her parents pushed her with a fierce love she didn’t want to escape. “I - I don’t really tell people that. But I am alone here, and I miss them. I have a huge family: we all live together, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. It is …” she trails off, waving her hands in the air, looking for a way to explain what her family meant to her. 

 

“Colorful?” Jane tries. 

 

Adena stops there, looking at her curiously. She found out, in the past few hours, that Jane and Sutton were some of the most perceptive and curious people she had met in her life. Kat had curled up on the worn out couch she had settled on, half zoned out, half dozing, and Sutton and Jane had pried about every part of her life. She found it easy to share, thirsty for pieces of their lives right back (and pieces of Kat’s, though she wouldn’t admit it). She smiled brightly at Jane and nodded soundly. 

 

“Yes. Colorful, loud… Happy.” She replies.

 

“Your family sounds wonderful, Adena.” Sutton chimes in. “I have brothers, but they’re way older than me, and don’t live in town. We were never really close.”

She shrugs, and Adena looks at her sympathetically.

 

“Adena -” Jane blurts, then stops, her mouth snapping shut like a fish’s. She opens it again, shakes her head minutely, and eventually decides to just say it. “Why do you wear the hijab?”

 

Adena smiles bitterly, because what she had hoped wouldn’t be a problem, seemed to be one, yet again. She looked down, steeling herself, blaming herself for being open with these women, hoping they’d be different. Something forms a ball in her throat, and she knows it is sorrow, loneliness, such a deep, aching loneliness.

 

“She doesn’t mean it that way.”

 

It was soft, grounding. She looks up and Kat’s eyes are sharp, focused, intense. She was so painfully here, and everything that shielded Adena’s insides was stripped away in a second.

Kat leans forward, her eyes burning into Adena’s retinas. “Jane likes to know everything about people. She asks everyone everything. Unashamed,” - She sends a small smile to Jane - “and brazen. It isn’t an attack. If anything,” - She turns back to Adena with worlds of meaning in her eyes - “it means she wants to get to know you better, get closer to you.”

Adena looks at Jane, who is looking at Kat with a strong and silent fondness, and then at Sutton, who is looking at both with admiration - and another feeling Adena can’t quite place - and she stops for a second. She surveys the situation from the outside, this bond that seemed to transcend the three women and become bigger than all three combined, this sacred thing that she knows was conserved through fire and hell, born of something innate and something much more. There is a fullness in her chest, and a knowledge that she is blessed to have been able to see such a bond in her lifetime.  

She makes eye contact with Kat in that second, and she thinks Kat knows exactly what she’s thinking.

 

She breathes in, stilling herself, and the world seems to spin very slowly.

 

“I choose to wear the hijab. It does not oppress me, but liberates me from society’s expectations of what a woman should look like. People tend to get uncomfortable when they cannot put you in a box, but - I … always liked to make people uncomfortable.” 

 

She looks at Kat then, and Kat feels so raw, like Adena is a presence expanding in her chest. It was almost painful, the way Adena became a part of her by ripping all her weakness aside, all with her brown eyes shining in the low light.

 

“You’re very good at that.” She whispers, and makes Adena chuckle, followed knowingly by Sutton and Jane.

 

A comfort seems to stretch over them as they share silence, all four of them, in their little bubble away from the world. Something new, something she hasn’t felt in a while, takes root in the marrow in Adena’s hips. Something that may grow to envelop her heart, if she nourishes it, takes time to hope for it.

 

She smiles, and calls it peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW! Surprise, I am ALIVE. TRULY surprising, as I had 4 tests, 1 homework assignment, and one essay due this week. hel l yEah.
> 
> I don't even know how LONG this is going to take me. Wanna stay and find out?
> 
> Yell at me: intueor.tumblr.com


	7. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Small intermediate chapter.
> 
> Listen to "Lisbon, OH" by Bon Iver while reading this.

There are some things that cannot be captured in pictures.

 

Kat is sitting on her balcony, letting the brisk air of an autumn night  blow over her. She stares at the stars, and muses at how there are several defined things that cannot be captured, wild and free. Neither by words, nor pictures. She is content to stare at the vastness of space and let the terrifying feeling of openness fill her chest. She wishes that she could find the words to describe the feeling, but at the same time, revels in the undescribable. 

 

Adena makes her feel this way.

 

She has an air of mystery, an air of something more, a greater understanding of the world, perhaps. Being with Adena makes Kat feel like she is on the edge of a cliff, staring down, terrified beyond everything she’s ever felt, but strangely excited at the prospect of flying. Being at the top of a mountain, staring at a vast mountain range, looking at the possibilities fading away in the hazy blue.

 

She breathes, and lets the night air filter into her marrow and rest.

 

\-----

 

There are some things that cannot be captured in paintings.

 

Though, Adena must admit, Van Gogh got pretty close. The sky cannot be captured because it is not something that can be described in a single snapshot: it is dynamic. His style is inherently dynamic, but it is still missing something, a quality. A rawness. The feeling of being so close, yet infinitely far away.

 

Night skies in Iran are beautiful, perfection looked at from the raggedness of the land, and she tries to close her eyes and imagine she can hear her maman bustling in the living room behind her, the curtain of her room billowing softly against her side. It’s hard, and her heart twinges with the memory. It is fond. The sky, vast and dark, winks down at her, envelops her in a blanket of loneliness that threatens to rip at her throat.

 

She wishes Kat were here. That she could hear her soft breathing, feel her warmth.

 

She sighs, and lets the night air filter into her marrow and ache.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was short. Not in the best place right now. 
> 
> Will try to post more later.


	8. Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story continues, and Kat falls deeper.

Kat’s  _ favorite  _ class is Photography Basics for Photography Majors. The professor is the most eccentric nerd she’s ever met, with wild frizzy hair that is always braided in two braids like a 4-year-old. She pulls it off, though, and Kat is always torn between paying attention to a subject she loves and just staring at Dr. Moran. The class itself embodies the reason she got into photography in the first place: they spend all their time discussing every aspect of certain photos, from historical to technical, and how those affect the message the artist is trying to convey. It is an open-ended, discussion based course, and the professor cares so much more about the students understanding the deeper meaning than she does about grades, all the while adding a quirky side to the whole mix. Kat always felt relaxed and eager in the beginnings of her two hour lectures.

 

Today, though, it was different.

 

Dr. Moran walks in with a thin stack of papers in her arms, silent, without her usual greeting and mounds of papers and sources. To Kat, this is the first red flag: today would be a turning point. She walks up to the desk and sets them down, the soft thunk resonating in the room that was deadly silent, then waits, and turns slowly, perusing the students. 

It was so silent the students could hear a pin drop. The heating hummed in the back of the room softly.

“You have been chosen.” She starts, and the sound resonates, pure.

“There are nine of you: chosen out of thousands of applicants to this school, this program. You have been chosen for a reason. You have been chosen because your lifeline, your reason to live, is photography, and you have a damn good eye.”

There was a thrill of excitement that ran through the room at that moment, the expectation for a challenge to come, physically embodied in the stack that loomed, alone, on the desk.

“I am done teaching you this semester. I have finished a semester’s worth of work in half of one, and I have nothing more to teach you now. I want you -” she stops, and stares, “-  _ every _ one of you, to show me, now, exactly why you are special.”

She turns, her fingertips brushing the top page of the packet, and Kat unconsciously leans forward. Her heart beats in her throat, and her breath boils at the top of her mouth.

“This is your final grade.” 

There is nothing in the room now, nothing except for these papers delicately balanced under the fingers of Dr. Moran, this promise of a challenge, a way to show her skill and her passion for photography. Her fingers twitch.

“ … Your final project.” She pauses, again, and Kat wishes absentmindedly that she wouldn’t be so goddamn dramatic.

Alice Moran stares at the 9 students, the young bright faces that were staring at her, rosy-cheeked, like they did every year. She secretly loved to make them squirm, and secretly loved to assign them one single project on which their entire grade depended on. Because, honestly, she knew how fucking brilliant every single one of them was, and she knew that steel was only made out of iron by being thrown in the forge. Sometimes, they flop, and she cuts them. Most of them produce pretty decent work, and they pass the class. And sometimes, very occasionally, she will see a piece that will render her speechless with a power that transcends every level of being. She liked to bet on who that person would be - if there was such a person that year - out of the nine.

There was one, this year. The curly haired beauty in the front row whose eyes dazzle when she sees a particularly good piece. Moran knew she had the eye, and she wanted to see what she could do. But, before that, she wanted her to struggle a bit.

 

“I want you to capture perfection.”

 

\-----

 

She wishes she could deny it, but she can’t: she thought of Adena. 

_ I want you _

Adena, her smile, her perfect curling of lips. Her hair, carefully wrapped, leaving everything - and nothing, simultaneously - to be desired. Adena and her laugh that is full-throated, sensuous. Adena whose eyes are dangerous, whose eyes glint and seem to wink at her in low light. Adena, whose brain is sharp and cunning and pulls apart layers of defense in a split second like a blaze of light.

_ to capture _

Why did she think of Adena? She knows so much, yet so little, about the woman. She knows where Adena comes from, what her middle name is, what she remembers about her maman. She doesn’t know, though, what her favorite smell is, what color she likes best in the early hours of the morning, or whether she likes the feeling of soft, worn book pages. 

_ perfection. _

These small details, she’s missing, and  _ these _ are what make perfection, but how could she possibly hope to capture all that in one picture? To capture one person, the entirety of them - how they look when they cannot contain their excitement and burst, how they look when they break - in one snapshot?

 

“You look like someone killed a puppy.”

It was instinctual, the response, it sprouted from her lips.

“Someone inevitably did, somewhere.” 

 

Jane’s lips curl into a smile, and she clasps her hands in front of her, biting her bottom lip. Kat’s eyes are fixed somewhere ahead, but she knows her friend is waiting her to connect, so she drags her eyes and mind away from Photography, to look up at her.

“Hey, you.” Jane says, softly. 

“Hi.” Kat’s heart feels bubbly, suddenly, a wonderful side effect of being so close to one of her closest friends. It was always so sudden when she saw either Jane or Sutton. She feels genuine happiness when she sees the blinding beauty that is Jane, a cutting sharpness to it. Sutton is softer, but no less poignant. “I am happy to see you.” She decides to blurt out.

 

Jane’s face splits into a smile. 

“Sap. I’m happy to see you too. C’mon, walk me back to my apartment, and tell me what’s on your mind.” 

She extends a hand, and Kat takes it gladly, leaving the cobwebs of her mind behind.

 

\-----

 

In the end, they both end up in Jane’s apartment, with Sutton on her way after her class, because they needed to discuss the photography project. There are three Sangrias on the way, with two having already been downed, and Kat feels looser than she did before. She feels ready to face the monster that is her amalgamation of feelings: that is, until she receives a Snapchat.

It was a very recent development, Adena having added her on Snapchat, and Kat didn’t completely know how she felt about it.

She opens, perhaps eagerly, her phone, with one hand (the other holding her second Sangria), and goes to Snapchat. Jane is looking at her out of the corner of her eye, but Kat doesn’t notice, because there’s a red box with Adena’s name on her phone, and she wants it open.

 

When she clicks it, she almost drops her Sangria and chokes on it at the same time.

 

It is Adena, in a  _ very _ loose headscarf, showing most of her hair down. The headscarf is blue, light, seemingly floating on her head. Her makeup is off, and she looks so natural and relaxed: 

with a smile drifting on her lips and eyes closed, she is the very image of peace. All that, and her neckline is halfway to hell.

 

“ _ Dear _ god.” Kat manages.

 

Jane was already behind her, looking at the picture (that thankfully had no time limit) and choking. 

“Holy shit.” Jane manages as well. She finds herself impressed with the skill of imagery this woman has - and expresses - in a single picture. And the neckline,  _ god  _ the neckline.

That was, obviously, the exact moment Sutton chose to walk in with a flourish, a huge groan and a call of where the hell was her Sangria. She was met with two ladies still staring at the picture, which she promptly sets herself out to do, and her jaw joins the others’ on the floor.

 

“Holy shit.”

“Hey, I said that!” Jane turns to her with a scowl on her face but mirth in her eye. “C’mon, I made you alcohol.” 

“Oh, thank god.”

 

Both ladies busy themselves with sugary alcohol and getting drunk. Kat knows she needs to stop looking at Adena’s lips, stop imagining them ghosting against her jaw, or getting caught on her teeth, or moaning out Kat’s name, but she can’t, and her eyes are stuck on the picture, and Adena’s lips. She can’t help it, she’s definitely a little tipsy, and when Kat gets any type of drunk, all her inhibitions are stripped away. She can’t help it: she feels hot all over, like burning, and it takes impossible strength of will for her to move her thumb and click the picture to banish it. She puts her phone down on the bar, attempting to blink away the vision of Adena, and tries to ignore the aching between her legs.

 

She looks up, and realizes that both of the other girls are staring at her.

They are both blushing, smiling, tipsy and Kat hears a snort. She’s not sure which one it comes from. She rubs her face, blushing harder.

“Yeah, yeah, leave me alone.”

 

They break out laughing, then, Sutton screaming that she’s so whipped, and Jane doubling up on the floor. Kat knew then there was going to be no constructive talk about the project that night, and she would have to deal with the itch soon enough, because it was really becoming a problem, and she  _ could _ not act like this around Adena. Who was so out of her league, and who would never, ever feel that way about her. Because she was Kat, a girl who loved photography and got lost in her own head way too much, and she was Adena, the literal embodiment of the sun and the goddess of everything. If there was one out there somewhere, it’d be Adena.

She fell asleep fitfully that night and slipped into a dream trap she had been desperately avoiding.

 

\-----

 

“Hey babe.”

The voice is sultry. Well, Adena’s voice is sultry to begin with, but when she really tries, it is like molten caramel.

And Adena’s mouth is very,  _ very _ close to her ear.

 

And she’s sitting on Kat’s lap.

 

Everything is so warm, and her skin feels tight all over her body. She wants to explode, or implode, or both, she wants to make noise, but her mind is transfixed by the vision in front of her. Adena is smiling softly, leaning back on her hands that lay on the coffee table. In front of Kat’s hands lay Adena’s abs, rippling in the soft light as Adena rocks her hips back and forth into Kat.

Kat audibly swallows.

And Adena tips her head back and laughs.

It’s filthy, the way she looks at her, and it hits Kat in the chest, a pointed, dark look that leaves nothing to the imagination. She’s rocking in her lap softly, and it’s  _ so _ not enough for Kat, who’s itching for more, but Adena has her pinned down on the sofa. There is so much  _ heat _ pooled between Kat’s legs, it’s impossible to ignore, but impossible to act upon.

 

“Adena.” Kat whines, her hands drifting up to graze Adena’s ribs.

 

Adena husks softly in return, leaning forward to mouth at Kat’s jaw. Kat melts a little, blood rushing to the crown of her head with every graze of Adena’s teeth on her skin. She whimpers, unable to move or ask Adena to do  _ anything,  _ her head dipping forward onto Adena’s shoulder.

She blessedly gets the message, reaching between her legs to touch Kat. Kat feels like she can breathe again, drunk on Adena’s fleeting touches against her inner thighs, getting close to where Kat needs her the most.

Adena teases her entrance and Kat exhales shakily, hips canting towards Adena’s fingers minutely. Her long, slender fingers delicately move Kat’s panties to the side and she runs one long stripe from the bottom to the top, avoiding Kat’s most tender spot. Kat whimpers again, waiting for Adena.

 

When Adena slips her fingers in, she uses not one, but two.

 

Kat’s head fills with white noise and she lets it fall back on the sofa. She is burning, deliciously burning, from everywhere Adena’s fingers touch her, filling her. Adena’s head falls on her shoulder and she emits a low groan, marveling how wet Kat is already, feeling Kat clench around her fingers. They are unmoving for a second, and Kat lets the feeling of tight warmth spread over her entire body.

 

Then, the dam breaks.

 

Adena curls her fingers, and Kat arches her back in surprise and white-hot pleasure. A moan rips itself from her lips and she reaches out to grab Adena’s forearm, fingernails digging in. Adena laughs out, half surprised and half incredibly aroused. Kat grinds down on Adena’s palm, tears squeezing out of her eyes at the sensation pulsating throughout her body. She exhales, shakily, and sucks air back in almost immediately to exhale an  _ oh my god _ .

 

Adena pumps her fingers in and out, once, and Kat shudders.

 

She picks up the pace, slickness covering her fingers and her palm, Kat’s harsh breaths punctuating every movement. Her hips jerk and her fingers seem glued to Adena’s forearm with the intensity of the feeling. Every carnal reaction Adena elicits from Kat gives her a burst of pleasure that coils and wraps itself around her center.

Kat slowly unravels and she starts to feel a new kind of pleasure, a pleasure that promises release like a massive wave crashing on shore. From her lips roll Adena’s name like a prayer, like a plea for mercy, and Adena responds in kind, whispering in her ear and telling her that she can let go, that she has permission, that she is doing so well. Kat feels it build and start to roll over, and she starts to see stars just as she is ready to -

 

She wakes up in her bed, heart racing, the ghost of Adena’s fingers on her, imprinted in her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I'm alive.


	9. Release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things finally happen.

They were in the coffee shop, again, but this time, Kat did not want to be in the comforting environment it provided. Every waft of coffee smell in her nose brought back the memory of Adena’s alluring smile, every blast of warm air bringing warmth to her cheeks with the memory of her dream. She could not get the feeling of Adena’s hands off her body (notwithstanding the fact that she had never really had them in the first place) and it was absolutely infuriating. It was an itch she could not scratch, boiling beneath her skin.

Sutton and Jane were getting coffee, and they knew something was up.

It happened just as soon as they sat down: the words had been waiting to erupt out of her mouth since she woke up from her dream, bubbling under her tongue.

“I had a sex dream about Adena last night.” Kat’s face was red and the blood was rushing in her ears, but Sutton and Jane immediately started grinning like complete idiots.

“Spill, dude?!” Sutton exclaims, like the momentary pause Kat took was altogether too long, and Jane follows through with a “duh” and enthusiastic nodding.

Kat took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, willing the soft ghost touches fluttering on the inside of her thighs to stop. “We were on the couch… together, and she was…” She trails off, looking down at her lap, embarrassed.

 

“Kat."

 

She looks up to Jane looking at her earnestly, and she felt her shoulders relax minutely. 

“There’s nothing wrong with a sex dream. You can tell us, or not tell us, we’re here for you and we support you, no matter what.”

She could breathe again. “Basically… we had sex, and I woke up right before… you know.” Kat husks a laugh. “I can’t get the feeling out of my head, and it’s driving me crazy.” She looks at her friends, and they are relieved to see that the tension seeped out of  her body.

“Well, girl…” 

“That’s a bummer.” Jane says with a smile, looking over the lid of her coffee. “Maybe…”

Kat looks at her expectantly, hoping she would get a genuine solution to her problem.

“...you should go out and get some.” Jane finishes, with a fit of laughter, making Sutton erupt in turn.

Kat groans immediately, leaning back in her chair. As they stay and laugh, spending time in each other’s company, the feeling never leaves; between her legs and on her neck, small whispers of lips and fingers stroke her even as she wills for them to leave.

 

\-----

 

Life continues on, as normal. It takes exactly three days for Kat to will away the pads of Adena’s fingers. It helps that she doesn’t see Adena at all, in those three days. Kat notes that she misses drawing class, and restrains herself from texting Adena immediately to see if she’s okay. Adena, as it turns out, was painting her, and lost track of time. Kat would only know that much later. 

Adena falls asleep on day one, amongst her paints. She hadn’t slept the night before, and the patter of rain on her windows lulls her to sleep. The splash of red paint she finds across her face makes her smile when she wakes up. She sends a snap to Kat and the notification makes Kat’s heart stop. The picture jumpstarts it again.

The second day, Kat sits down and tries to figure out what she will take a picture of for her final project. It takes her a whole bottle of wine, and half a notepad, to come to the conclusion that it could not be anything but Adena. She spends the rest of the night trying to ask Adena to take pictures of her. She fails.

On the third day, Kat goes in the woods and takes photos until her fingers are numb. Every picture, she imagines herself trying to explain why it could be described as perfection. Every picture, she knows it won’t be right. She gives up when she can’t feel the trigger anymore.

 

\-----

 

Adena is in her room, looking at a notepad. She always loved notepads, always loved the feeling of new, creamy paper on her fingertips, the promise of new ideas. She loves Paris, because there are so many cheap  _ papèteries _ that sell all kinds of different notebooks and sketchbooks. In front of her, there is a half-finished drawing etched on the paper. She knows exactly who it is, yet she continues to fill in the dark spaces with short, soft strokes of her pencil. Each curl, each line of the neck, she continues to draw out. Soft, yet withdrawn, resilience in her grip. She puts several seconds between each line so as to hold back on the fever that itches behind her fingers. She knows that if she succumbs to it, the end will only leave her feeling empty inside.

 

Evetually, she carefully puts it on a table. She is afraid to continue, her drawing stuck in a careful balance between unfinished and overdone that she is afraid to cross. The pencil goes on top, and she crosses the room to make herself tea and check her phone.

Adena’s phone is always on silent: she only checks it when she wants. That’s why she only sees Kat’s text when she is perched on her windowsill, drinking jasmine tea.

 

_ > Hey! _

 

She smiles at that: a short and sweet opening. Could go anywhere.

 

_ Hey you. _

 

She replies, and looks out at the street while continuing to drink her tea. Across the town, Kat hears the notification of a text, and jumps to her phone. She had been on the computer, looking at an article Jane had written for her Advanced Journalism class, but the sound of a text, which she assumed could only be from Adena, brought her to feverish excitement.

 

_ > What are you doing right now? _

 

She could have been more smooth, but her fingers pressed the send button faster than her brain wanted them to. The reply is almost immediate.

 

_ Drinking my favorite tea and drawing. You? _

_ > Reading an article Jane wrote for Journalism. It’s about immigration and it’s really interesting. _

 

Adena sees the three dots pop back up and holds off on a reply until Kat finishes her text.

 

_ > I wanted to ask you something _ .

 

That’s when her heart jumps in her throat. Usually, personal questions follow after openings like that. Really personal questions that Adena does not feel ready for, especially not with Kat, the one person that can tear down her defenses with a smile and a bounce of her curls. Nonetheless, she breathes in one deep breath, and decides to rip off the bandaid.

 

_ Sure, shoot. _

_ > I want to take pictures of you. _

 

Another immediately reply. Her heart feels stuck in her throat. It wasn’t what she was expecting, but her face is so warm, it feels numb. She feels her heartbeat hammering so hard that the fabric of her shirt moves against her side. Later, she doesn’t remember inviting Kat over.

 

\-----

 

Kat got the text and didn’t even hesitate. She had her scarf and coat on in seconds, boots on after that, her camera coming in last. She flipped off the lights and locked her apartment in a heartbeat. Adena lived on the other side of campus, and walking in the frigid air helped calm her racing heart. She was going to see her, take pictures of her, be in her apartment, where everything smelled of her and looked like her and -

She sucked in another breath. It had been a few seconds she hadn’t, and not breathing only made the anxiety worse. The biting cold of the outdoors served to remind her that she was there, present in the moment, her cheeks reddening in the air.

She looked up, then, and saw that she was at Adena’s apartment. It was quaint; she had actually passed it before, but she never knew it was where Adena lived. Adena answered almost immediately after Kat rung the bell.

 

“Yes?”

 

Kat nearly melted right there, at the sound of her voice.

 

“It’s - It’s me.” 

 

She cursed at herself for stuttering like a little girl, but the lock clicked nonetheless, allowing her to walk in.

Adena’s apartment number had been texted to her minutes ago, so it was fresh on her mind - she didn’t even have to check her phone. It took her only a few moments to run up to the door and raise up her hand to knock. That is where she stilled, waiting, hesitating, wondering if she was ready to face everything this meant. Her body acted without command, rapping a halting knock on the door. There was a moment of silence where Kat felt like her world was hanging on a string. Then, slowly, the door opened.

 

Kat was not prepared for the vision that appeared in front of her.

 

Because of course Adena wouldn’t wear a hijab at home.

 

Because of course Kat hadn’t thought of that.

 

Because either way, there was no way Kat could prepare herself for that.

 

She made a sound in the back of her throat that sounded like a strangled whine, and her cheeks flushed. She could not make her mouth work, her mouth gaping open and shut like a fish with no words coming out.

Adena had known. She knew what her hair did to people, what seeing it uncovered for the first time could do to someone, and she had wanted to have that breathtaking effect on Kat. When she slowly opened the door, leaning against it, she saw Kat’s mouth open. She saw the blush cloud her cheeks, her pupils blow  _ wide _ . And when she heard the strangled gasp, there was a carnal reaction in her that made her want to leap forward and grab at Kat somehow. Only an iron grip on the doorframe kept her in place. The gaping that followed only made her smile, and she flashed it brightly at Kat.

Eventually, she decides to end Kat’s wordless predicament.

She reaches forward with one hand, and Kat looks at her and takes it. Slowly, Adena pulls Kat into her orbit and into her arms. She wraps her in a hug, pressing herself soundly into the other woman and smelling her hair. Again, giving herself a visceral pang of deja-vu, she sighs into Kat’s ear as the tension melts out of her. She notices that Kat’s hands are shaking minutely as they grip at Adena’s shoulder blades.

 

“ _ Hey _ .” Kat finally exhales out, hot and close in her ear. With the exhale, her body all but melts in Adena’s arms.

 

They stay like that, frozen, hearts pounding together.

In the end, Adena chooses to put some distance between herself and the heat of Kat’s body, before she loses herself in the hazy feeling floating behind her eyes (and with it, her self control). She lets go and steps back, crossing her arms in front of her chest so as to put some barrier between her heart and Kat’s. The warm brown of Kat’s eyes makes her chest feel like fire.

 

“Please, come in.”

 

\-----

 

Turns out, Kat loves jasmine tea.

 

The first view of the apartment was interesting: Kat immediately saw the space as something extremely versatile that could be used for photography. She fell in love with the huge windows, while Adena fell in love with the sparkle in her eye. Kat also spent a lot of time looking at Adena’s art, but not the paintings of her (Adena had half the mind to hide them before Kat got there). They ended up drifting to the kitchen area, where Kat perched herself on a barstool and accepted a cup of jasmine tea, with sugar, please.

And so she sat, sipping delicious nectar and glancing at Adena not-too-subtly.

Adena really was beautiful. Her eyebrows were delicate, curving, her eyes large and expressive. Kat was constantly being pulled in by those eyes. Her nose, long, leading down to the prettiest set of lips Kat had ever seen. The urge to kiss her grew stronger by the day, and a faraway voice in the back of head told her that she wasn’t going to hold off much longer.

Adena just stared, and Kat felt like she was being unraveled.

 

“So… pictures?” 

 

Adena whispers it, and it seems to echo in the space. The sound seems almost intrusive, but she could not bear to keep the eye contact any longer. It seems to break the spell efficiently enough, as Kat looks sharply away and rubs her palms on her thighs. She huffs.

 

“Yes. Of course.” It’s loud, but the moment, crystal-clear and hanging in space, was already over.

 

\-----

 

Watching Kat look around a space is like watching a predator appraise an area known to contain prey. Her gaze is sharp and long, her fingertips drift on surfaces. She turns lights on and off, looking at the way the light plays on objects, seeing how she could use the space. Adena marvels at the way her gaze looks now, sharp and icy, like steel. Wordlessly, she sets to work, gently leading Adena by the wrist to lean against a wall. The point where the pads of her fingers touch Adena’s pulse point feels like fire.

 

And then, she is shooting. 

 

Kat starts, and doesn’t stop, doesn’t even breathe. She is afraid to break the stillness of the shot if she so even moves her chest a millimeter. When she does break, it is with a flurry of breath and a shot forward. Adena blinks, and Kat is in her space, her smell filling her nostrils, her fingers firmly touching parts of her body to adjust her position.  _ Blink.  _ Her hands are on her hip bone, soft, gripping. It sends a jolt through Adena’s body.  _ Blink.  _ The pads of her fingers on Adena’s jaw. Her mouth goes dry.  _ Blink.  _ One finger, strong, on Adena’s sternum, pushing her back to the wall. Kat is staring at her, eyes boring into her head, and she is powerless against the single finger. They are motionless, stuck in the grips of silence. 

 

_ Step forward, please, Kat, come to me _ . Adena repeats in her head, holding eye contact, refusing to relent, unable to act.

 

Instead, Kat turns around to reposition herself, grabbing her camera in the process.

Kat takes a shaky breath, trying to hold herself together. It took all her willpower not to push Adena against the wall just there, to take her and ravish her in all her perfection. The thought of infringing on Adena’s personal space, going against her will, had Kat shuddering away immediately. If there was something Kat hated even more than rejection, it was pushing herself on someone that didn’t want her. Adena was one of those people, clearly: how could she? Kat was, well - Kat. And Adena was perfection.

Her fingers flutter on the trigger and her heart flutters in her throat.

Adena sees Kat turn around and freeze. She stays unmoving for a long time, her breath audibly short. Adena is torn between wanting to reach out for her and respecting her boundaries. She wants Kat to open up to her, to tell her what is always bothering her, sending her spiraling into bouts of silence and worrying her lips.

 

“ _ Kat? _ ” She whispers. The sound dissipates into the silence as if there was a physical wall separating them.

 

There is silence, another long moment. Then -

 

“Adena, why am I here?” Kat says, suddenly, in a normal voice, clearing the sound barrier. She whirls around and faces Adena in all her wild energy. Adena just gapes, sounds not forming.

 

“Why did you invite me here?” She repeats, taking a step forward into Adena’s space, once more turning Adena’s world into nothing but Kat.

 

Adena cannot process everything, cannot process  _ and _ hold herself back, hold back her desperate need to have Kat in her arms. The sheer force of will that keeps her arms at her sides is too much, almost painful. She searches Kat’s face, looking to see if Kat understands her predicament: her need to act and her inability to do so. But Kat just looks at her. And sets her on fire. Tears spring up in her eyes as her body is being torn both ways, her attraction pulling her forward and her immeasurable respect for Kat holding her back. She stays, frozen, trembling.

Kat stares, not understanding why Adena won’t answer her. Her eyes flit everywhere, from Adena’s eyes, to her chest, to her hands, to her eyes again, to her lips. She notices, slowly, and it dawns on her, why Adena is shaking, why her knuckles are white, why her lip trembles, why her eyes convey a deep pain and a deep longing. She understands, slowly, but she still holds herself back, because she needs to  _ know _ . 

 

She takes her camera off her neck and places it on the floor.

 

She stands up, and raises her hand to Adena’s cheek. Her hand moves slow, her fingertips touching the cheek first, then sliding all the way to the edge of her ear. 

Adena gasps, softly, head turning without her permission to brush her lips to the inside of Kat’s hand, exhaling loudly. A blush covers her cheeks, but she is too far gone to be embarrassed. She needs Kat, needs more of the touch.

Kat understands, and the knowledge blossoms like liquid gold in her chest. It curls in her chest and swoops low, turning into something that blurs her vision and quickens her heart. 

 

It is inevitable force that pulls them towards each other, Kat first and Adena quickly second. 

 

They collide, bodies fitting together, and Kat gasps with the euphoria pouring from Adena’s mouth. She sees stars and feels nothing but softness: the tenderness with which Adena kisses her and lays her hand on Kat’s collarbone makes it hard for her to breathe. Adena is gentle, so gentle at first, while Kat marvels at how she tastes, how she feels. It’s so much at once, Kat thinks her world is going to implode at the point where their mouths connect.

Then, all of a sudden, the gentleness is over, because Kat surges forward and grabs at Adena’s hips. She needs,  _ needs _ to feel the woman in front of her, needs Adena all over her, inside her. Gone is her self control and her mouth opens, tongues intertwining as her fingers thread into Adena’s hair, pulling her close enough to Kat to hurt. Kat’s jaw trembles, breath harsh on Adena’s neck where her lips latch on, where she bites, none too gently. 

 

Adena gasps and Kat freezes, suddenly terrified.

She moves back, slightly, seeing the mark blossoming on her neck already. Her eyes flit up to Adena’s, scared of what she’ll see there, afraid that she made a mistake.

Adena’s eyes are dark, full of desire and  _ hunger _ .

Kat’s lips curl with satisfaction, turning into elation, but she pauses still, waiting for Adena to tell her that she is okay, that she wants this. She needs to hear Adena say it.

“Yes, Kat -  _ please _ , Kat, touch me.” Adena breathes out, grabbing at Kat’s shirt, and when their lips are back on each other, Kat stops thinking.

 

\-----

 

They made it to the bed, somehow, and several pieces of clothing have been taken off, somehow. Kat isn’t quite sure, because she doesn’t know how to think past the haze in her brain. Every touch Adena makes on Kat’s body leaves what feels like a brand. Her body is hot, too hot, burning at every touch. She’s lying on her back on the bed and Adena is on top of her. Adena’s mouth is on her neck and it leaves her legs weak as she shifts them back and forth. This doesn’t go unnoticed by Adena, and when she glances down, she chuckles something low against the skin of Kat’s neck.

 

And it’s about the hottest thing that Kat’s ever heard: a groan, guttural and desperate, escapes her lips.

That’s the hottest thing  _ Adena’s _ ever heard and it only makes her pupils blow wider.

 

“Tell me - tell me what you like.” Adena chokes as her fingers crawl to the hook of Kat’s bra.

 

Kat is wordless for a moment, processing the fact that her bra is off, suddenly. 

“I like - I like -” Her brain is not working, suddenly, she can’t think of any words. Adena’s fingers twirl around a nipple and the feeling spreads throughout her whole body, rendering Kat completely incapable of speech. She manages to gasp out: “you.”

Adena looks at her from above, and Kat feels like she could scream if she has to wait any longer. Slowly, a smile, on Adena’s face: she leans down, and puts her mouth close, so close to Kat’s ear. 

 

“My mouth?”

 

And Kat’s reaction is carnal and immediate: her fingers tighten on Adena’s arms and a gasping whine escapes her mouth. Adena takes this as a queue and wastes no more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People. 
> 
> It's been almost a year. 
> 
> I don't know if I am going to keep this going to be honest, but here this is at least. I don't even have an excuse as to why I haven't updated it, because I think I definitely could have. 
> 
> Please forgive the wait. I hope it is worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys. Second fic ever, take it easy. A few things:
> 
> 1) Kat's characterization is different. I know that, I did it on purpose. It's going somewhere, hopefully.
> 
> 2) Could not, for the LIFE of me, find out where Adena lived. So I made it Tehran. Let me know if there is an actual canon country out there.
> 
> 3) I am not affiliated with tumblr user coeurdastronaute. I am coeur-dastronaute. Come yell at me. (Stole the name from them bc I love it)
> 
> Let me know! Feedback! Pls!


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